


Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

by Volts



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Blood of Elves, Disabled Character, Dopplers (The Witcher), F/M, M/M, Minor Violence, Multi, Post-Canon, Prosopagnosia, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29758056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volts/pseuds/Volts
Summary: One night, as Jaskier grades poetry papers in his office at Oxenfurt, he is disturbed by Yennefer of Vengerberg, who informs him that their mutual beau, Geralt, is missing. Here begins the saga of 5-ish Witchers who might have been Geralt but weren’t (and the one that was) and a road trip to rescue him before it's too late.*Set in the midst of Blood of Elves, after the events of S1 Netflix Show, and featuring Face-Blind Jaskier; AKA the 5+1 & Road Trip fic that nobody asked for.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46
Collections: The Witcher Quick Fic #7





	Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Quick Fic Challenge.  
> Title is from Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by The Platters.
> 
> Note: Jaskier here has a condition called Prosopagnosia, or Face Blindness. I do not have it, not do I know anyone who does. I used www.faceblind.org.uk/ as my point of research but if anyone has any (constructive) comments as to where I went wrong, please tell me.

It’s only when he reaches the bottom of the mountain does Jaskier realise how much of his life he’s spent with Geralt. Over half. He has half a mind to go straight back up there and have a proper argument about the things he said. The other half of him wants to envelope Geralt in biggest hug known to man and comfort him till the end of time, which is what he’d been set to do before getting rather a lot of verbal abuse.

Surely Geralt will have calmed down by now?

Well, Jaskier’s going to go to Oxenfurt and spend a miserable winter teaching bored adolescents’ proper metre and how to form a proper debate. If Geralt wants to apologise, he can catch up. With a sniff he can’t attribute to autumn allergies, Jaskier realises he’s crying. He’d been warned, his friends had told him. They’d all told him he was an idiot, dedicating his life and love to someone who didn’t love him as much as he loved them. That eventually his heart would break.

One night, 2 months later he’s asleep at his desk with an inky manuscript glued to the side of his cheek from where he’d faceplanted into this week’s poetry submissions.

Teaching is a nightmare; he’s surrounded by students who change their look from week to week. For two weeks straight there’s a student who sits in the front with his hair in plaits only for him to show up the next week with it all cut off. Jaskier only recognises him from the place of seating and his Temerian accent. His fellow staff aren’t much better. When they’re getting drunk after work in the Three Little Bells it’s a little easier, he’s learnt to note their style of dress, but by day? Impossible.

A loud knock on his door awoke him out of his slumber, dear gods what time was it? His candle clock has burned down, he had three hours left on it when he sat down to read his student’s assignments, so it’s definitely past midnight now …

“For fuck sake bard open this door now!”

Ah, Yennefer. Despite himself, Jaskier’s always liked Yennefer. She has such a distinctive tone – seared into his brain from the moment she demanded he expel a wish he didn’t own – and has a signature perfume which is always helpful for recognition. He can generally tell if she’s in the vicinity due to the way she seemed to pull Geralt in like a fisherman with a line. Also, she saved him from almost being kidnapped by a mage a few months ago. She’d even escorted him back here to Oxenfurt. Charming, terrifying, lady.

Wait, why was she _here_?

“Coming,” and he opens the door for her.

She sweeps in wearing a cloak that unsettles him, it’s not up to her usual standards. She’s lacking her Lilac and Gooseberry glamour as well. Maybe this _isn’t_ her…?

“Yennefer?”

Yennefer is looking at him in a way that suggests she’s about to be very offended.

Face-blindness. That’s what the healer had said when he was a lad. His sister had it too, hence why he always wore the brightest clothes in a room - a habit started for Cecelia, who always wore a buttercup necklace if she knew he was coming home. And absolutely useless in Oxenfurt where he’s expected to cover his clothes in dour robes of black or brown or grey. He’d rebelled and ordered his in dark green, much to the disproval of the Chancellor. He was going to be as noticeable as possible, just in case there were any like-minded people around.

Some of his friends do try for him. Essi has assured him he’d be the first to know if she ever changed her haircut, her curls always covering one eye, and Dudu, when around, had made a habit of introducing themselves immediately because being a doppler, which is nothing bad in itself, is confusing for people without Jaskier’s condition let alone Jaskier himself. Then again, he never knows what people look like anyway. Valdo Marx had a horrible habit of ‘starting’ fashions, he always turned up in the most garish clothes possible. But he also always accosted Jaskier with an insult. To others it may look antagonistic, in fact Marx himself had said he ‘ _wanted to make sure Jaskier knew who he was about to be beaten by’_ , but It was sort of sweet, really.

It gets him into a lot of trouble. How was he supposed to know that this woman was the same Duchess whose husband Geralt had saved from Nekkers this morning? (Alright he’d recognised the headdress, but she told him Ferdinand would be out). Or that he’d flirted with this man yesterday but now he was wearing a different doublet and had washed his hair? Honestly, not recognising his past paramours – or their spouses - had gotten him into more trouble than it was sometimes worth. And it wasn’t his fault, mostly.

Yennefer? has her eyebrows raised. He’s almost sure it’s her. She’s wearing black, as always. Black waves framing her face. He’s mostly sure…

“It is you!” he hurriedly clarifies, unsurely, “Only you could glare at me like that, I’m sure. Why are you here?” he gestures for her to sit at his desk and perches himself on the corner of his bed.

“Have you seen Geralt recently?”

“No. He, uh,” _broke my heart a little, quelled the flame that burned in my chest,_ “- left. I’ve not seen him since the mountain.”

“Hm. There’s talk of a Nilfgaardian mage going after a Witcher. Geralt was supposed to bring his child surprise to Nenneke so I could teach her about her chaos. They never showed up. I think it may be the mage who tried to abduct you.” She’s rifling through what’s on his desk.

“Right. Sorry, I’ve not heard a thing.”

“It was a long shot. I thought he might have written to you about their route, but it’s no matter,” she gets up to leave.

“Wait. You came here just to ask me _that?_ ” He doesn’t believe it, the audacity of her!

“You were on my way.” He doesn’t believe that _either._

“Liar liar, pan – dress on fire!” She rolls her eyes at him, but she’s worried.

“I thought they might send you a ransom. You’re one of his only friends with a permanent address at the moment,” well that puts a spin on it.

“That’s what was so interesting about my papers, I hope you put everything back where it was!”

“Your appalling filing system is intact, though I think you’ve marked Hildebrand far too high for his poem on ‘Nature’, now excuse me I have a Witcher to find.” And, with a nod which might mean ‘ _it was nice seeing you, stay safe_ ’ or else ‘ _thank you for being utterly useless’_ , she sweeps from the room.

“Hey! Wait up!” Jaskier, hastily, grabs his travel bag – it’s mostly packed: bedroll, a change of (last season’s) clothes, his beautiful knife, and a medical kit – and his lute, and, after blowing out his main candle, leaves the room. (Forgetting to lock the door behind him).

He recognises Yennefer’s black dress and hair walking away from him, “I’m coming too.”

“I didn’t save your neck for nothing, stick to lecturing teenagers,” she tosses over her shoulder.

“No chance! I haven’t had an adventure in ages,” well, months, “and I am in dire need of new song material. This is going to be brilliant.”

“And rescuing Geralt has nothing to do with it?”

“Pish-posh Yennefer, can’t it be both?”

The little stub of a match buried in his heart sparks back to life and a second spark joins it, as he set into step besides her horse. Her horse tries to bite him. He cares not, he’ll win her over.

*

Here begins the saga of 5-ish Witchers who might have been Geralt but weren’t.

It begins, as most things with Yennefer do, dramatically. If Jaskier were ever at a party and the doors swung open, the band stopped, and the atmosphere dropped to a whispery hush, he would assume that the person who entered the room was Yennefer of Vengerberg. She spends one, boring, day scrying in her mirror – tales never tell of the times preparing for the epic fight, do they? Perhaps Jaskier should rectify that, but then again, a ballad about Geralt coating his blade with draconid oil and tramping up a sheer cliff before the hunt would be rather a let-down before the big event, wouldn’t it? People would much rather hear about a wyvern being killed than alchemical properties or falling on your arse into muddy rivers.

Landing on a beach in Northern Redania in the midst of a battle with Pirates was, admittedly, thrilling. Far too thrilling. Jaskier ducks a blade, which sails over his head and embeds itself in a barrel, and hunkers down behind a beached wreck. Yennefer seems to be choking several unfortunate men on their own saliva. The Witcher –

\- whirling around with a beautiful precision upon the sand, steel blade ringing through the air -

-isn’t Geralt.

This Witcher has auburn hair slicked back off of his face, tendrils covering his eyes as he fights off 3 pirates at once. His gambeson is brown and red, a colour Geralt would never wear. (Jaskier had had enough trouble getting him into the navy doublet for the betrothal ball – the little buttercups he’d had embroidered upon it providing an easy marker for him to identify Geralt by later when they had inevitably became separated).

Jaskier pulls himself out of his reverie as a bomb explodes somewhere near him. Oh fuck. Another bomb lands at his feet and, with a presence of mind he didn’t think he had, picks it up and lobs it back.

When the fight ends, Eskel introduces himself. He’s not heard from Geralt since he, Ciri, and Triss, departed from Kaer Morhen in the spring.

Rats.

Yennefer goes off, with a bottle of purloined wine, to see if she can trace Triss’s magical signature, leaving Eskel and Jaskier the, lovely just lovely, job of moving the bodies to be burned. Bodies attract Nekkers and Drowners and Sirens all manner of other charming creatures.

2 hours later Jaskier is, for a reason he can’t explain, crying onto Eskel’s shoulder and lamenting his doomed love with Geralt. He’s a little bit drunk.

“Of course, he loves you back, you know how Geralt is. We weren’t exactly taught how to express our feelings at Kaer Morhen but he’s always been a sap.”

“So sappy! He used to pull me close and kiss my forehead whenever he had to leave early. And he always knew when I needed new boots, and he gave me this little dagger to protect myself! Oh, why didn’t I wait for him at the bottom of the mountain!”

Being with Geralt was different. After all, ‘ _white hair, big old loner, two very, very scary-looking swords’_ was a very distinctive look. And if he recognises those features, he just had to doublecheck for the yellow eyes. There was no way he could mistake Geralt for anyone else. Occasionally the man came in covered in the guts and eurgh of whatever creature he’d been hunting, but honestly who else would do that?Jaskier had fallen hard. Underneath all that big, buff, gruff, exterior, Geralt was so soft and kind.

He's spent nigh on 2 decades loving and being loved by that man, why oh why hadn’t he waited?

“He said you’d had an argument.”

“I took it far too personally,” Jaskier lamented, sniffing. He’d been hurt, damnit. He knew he caused Geralt lots of trouble, he did – even if those _specific_ instances quoted were _not_ his fault – and tempers had been running high that day, what with Yennefer breaking up with him and Borch being Borch.

(Was there a rule, _somewhere_ , that said that Dragons _had_ to be cryptic? Jaskier had heard of a sorcerer, on an island past Skellige, who insisted on taking the advice of a dragon living under his King’s castle. The dragon spoke in riddles and often misled the good-hearted mage into abandoning his friends for the ‘good of the kingdom’. These friends, through lack of support, often then turned evil. Jaskier supposed his mother had meant the tale as a cautionary one, a lesson as to always be kind and to trust your own instincts rather than the ones of strangers. 7-year-old Jaskier had just liked the idea of the dragon).

“Really?” Eskel said, “Geralt said he was far too harsh. He was headed for Oxenfurt, but I guess he heard grumblings about Cintra and had to make a snap decision.”

Jaskier broke into a renewed spill of drunken tears and eventually cried himself to sleep on a bemused Eskel’s shoulder.

*

Yennefer, now armed with the information that Triss had been travelling with Geralt – she is, quite rightly, concerned about such an occurrence, especially since it seems to have gone wrong somewhere – focusses on tracking her magical signature for the next 2 days whilst Jaskier gets drunk, sleeps fitfully, and powers through a day with a splitting headache – a double whammy, an emotional and physical hangover at the same time for fucks sake.

They bid farewell to Eskel before meandering to a ‘place of power’ for Yennefer to draw from to create a portal. Yennefer isn’t really entering into the spirit of their little trip. Jaskier understands why, he is also desperately worried about Geralt, but if they don’t lighten the mood, they risk drooping into depression completely. They need a jolt of energy. He’s perfected, over the years, his set list for travelling with Geralt – calming with playful vibes. For Yennefer, Jaskier tries the same thing. She doesn’t need bolstering like Geralt does, Yennefer knows her own worth, but she does need cheering. She doesn’t especially like his ideas for snacks, nor his ideas for rest days or leisure activities. He’s not actually suggesting they _do_ any of them, they are after all on a time crunch, but distraction can be a good thing.

“Come on, Yenna, I’ve heard that nearby there is a bathhouse praised by Kings and Princes. I know you love baths, or at least wash sometimes. Or is it Geralt that uses that much bathwater on your date nights? Do you share? Oh I do envy-”

“We’re not going, we’re tracking a mage, Geralt’s in danger.”

“-you being small enough to fit into inn baths with him. Alas Geralt and I usually don’t fit. We’ll have to come back at some point. Do you want a walnut half?”

He steers Pegasus closer to Yennefer so as to offer her the paper bag.

She takes one with a small smile. Progress.

After 3 days of hard slogging - Pegasus refuses to obey even the simplest of commands to go faster much to displeasure all around - they reach a place powerful enough for Yennefer to draw from whilst also disguising her own chaotic signature from Nilfgaard.

They expect, upon exiting the portal, Triss Merigold, a mage Jaskier has only heard about.

What they get is a bar fight in brothel.

Jaskier sidesteps a sex worker expertly escorting a man with a bloodied nose outside. The injured man hits the floor pretty hard, Jaskier doesn’t feel especially sympathetic.

“What the fuck!”Oh-there-she-is-dressed-in- black-Yennefer looks around them. Her floor length dress distinguishing her from the more sparsely dressed employees.

“Is Triss here?” He asks her.

“No,” she nods at the passing Madame, “But she’s been here. I’m sure. Is this the sort of place you and Geralt would go to, on your nights out?”

Jaskier shrugs, he, obviously, doesn’t recognise any of the workers, and, whilst he tries to remember décor, he’s been practically everywhere in the last 23 years so they have sort of blended into one.

A man walks in.

Two swords. Dark hair. Wolf Medallion. Was that a scar?

“Eskel? Didn’t we leave you in Redania?” Jaskier is properly confused. How did Eskel get here – oh wait, he’s done it again, hasn’t he?

This witcher is dressed closer to Geralt, all in black. On closer examination, his hair is darker than Eskel’s.

“You must be Geralt’s Jaskier, he always said you dressed like an eyesore. Personally, I think it’s pretty snazzy.”

Jaskier preens a little under the witcher’s appreciative gaze.

“Uh, Geralt isn’t with you, is he? We’re looking for him,” he gestured to Yennefer.

“No. He was taking the girl to some temple.”

“Is Triss with you, then?”

The witcher barked a laugh, “Why would Merigold be with me?”

“We tracked her here, her magical, uh, essence or something?”

“Have you got something of hers?” Yennefer demanded.

“Oh yeah, I took one of her pretty handkerchiefs to cry into every night over the glory of being a witcher(!)” The witcher says, hands on hips.

“Please, Geralt’s in trouble.” Jaskier’s voice cracks in the middle.

The witcher sobered up, “How?”

They explained. Lambert, it turns out, is clueless as to the whereabouts of Geralt, Triss, or Ciri. He did have something of Triss’s, a pestle of hers he’d taken in error of his own. He takes Yennefer’s spare xenovox and promises to keep an eye out for them.

Yennefer and Jaskier resume their little road trip.

The fact that they’ve not heard of the death Princess Cirilla, or her appearance in Nilfgaard, is heart-warming. Similarly, they’re sure that the death of Triss - or rather the ‘re-death’ of Triss Merigold, one of the 14 dead at Sodden – would make some sort of news.

So, they’re following witcher contracts on noticeboards; it’s just like when Jaskier was back on the path. Yennefer even lets him watch as he she takes down drowners, Nekkers, and even the draconid-thing they’d come across in Lyria.

Until he gets injured, a basilisk which flicks it’s very sharp tail right into Jaskier’s midsection. Then she panics and spends a concerted effort into keeping his blood inside his body, which he appreciates, and scolds him for an entire night. He falls asleep to her worried grumbles. The inn bed is small, but he awakes the next morning to her curled protectively around him.

They don’t talk about it, but when they next camp out they sit close together by the fire and push their bedrolls close.

*

They meet a griffin witcher named Coen in Rivia. Nice chap. Excellent taste in music, bad taste in wine. He offers to check the far north for Yennefer and Jaskier, but other than that he’s not much help.

They appreciate it, of course they do. But…

By this point, Jaskier has stopped trying to cheer Yennefer up. It’s been 3 months and they’ve not heard hide nor hair of any of them. He misses Geralt so much. He can tell Yennefer does too, even though she’s doing a good job of not showing it.

All his songs have taken a melancholic quality to them. His heart is so full of heat and love that it’s burning him up from the inside. The smoke of his smouldering heart – not snuffed out, _not_ \- it pricks at his eyes. His dagger, he thinks of Geralt’s gruff but heartfelt presentation of the weapon. When he sees an apple, he thinks of Roach. When they pass children in the road as they travel, Jaskier wonders about Princess Cirilla.

Yennefer is frustrated over her malfunctioning powers; she can’t always control them. On more than one occasion Jaskier has awoken to the fire blazing to the height of a bonfire and Yennefer trying to control the blaze. The idea of Geralt dead troubles her as much as it troubles Jaskier. She’s concerned about Triss, in a strange way, too.

One night they even try to fuck the worry out of their systems but Jaskier starts crying and they end up cuddling under the stars. It would be terribly romantic if it weren’t so heart-breaking.

“They’ll have just taken a detour,” Jaskier whispers into her collarbone one night.

“Pretty long detour,” Yennefer murmurs back, “I used to hate the connection between us. Right now, I’d give anything to feel the tug towards him.”

“I used to envy that,” Jaskier says, wiggling comfortably as he can as she traces patterns – he knows they’re protective sigils – onto his arm, “That you always knew where he was. I know it felt like a curse to you, but to know he was safe…”

She sighs.

He sniffs loudly and she makes a half-hearted effort at pushing him away, even as she strokes his hair and allows his arm to tighten around her.

*

Jaskier has a moment of hope in Kaedwen. They’ve been heading northward hoping, not hoping, that they were delayed early on. (They should, should, should, have gotten further). Yennefer is holed up in the alderman’s office, pouring over old maps, scrying for the route they would have taken from Kaer Morhen.

Jaskier’s listening in at a bar, hoping for a tidbit, morsel, a _bite_ , _any bite,_ of information - the Nilfgaardian army hasn’t even got this far yet, _what the fuck are they even doing here, Yennefer?_ – when a figure sits down at the end of the bar.

White hair. Two swords.

His heart skips a beat. His eyes well up. Holy fuck, sweet Melitele. 

“Geralt!” He throws his arms around the figure –

But. A stone drops in his stomach. A dead, cold, weight.

This isn’t Geralt. He feels all wrong. He’s a bit shorter. And the hair isn’t white _white._ Its more grey. The smell is off, not enough Roach, too much leather oil.

He staggers back, uttering the apologies that have come easily to him all his life, but the witcher – he is a witcher, at least – is clasping him on the arms and saying, “Easy there, lad.”

“I’m sorry, I mistook you for a friend of mine-”

“Geralt, you took me for Geralt. I’m Vesemir. You must be,” he looks Jaskier up and down, “Jaskier?”

Oh shit, this wasn’t how Jaskier wanted to meet Geralt’s father figure.

“We’re looking for him. He never made it to Nenneke’s.”

Vesemir’s brow furrowed.

“Come with me.”

The trek up to Kaer Morhen is gruelling, but Jaskier and Yennefer are used to that. The room in which they are put is clearly Geralt’s. Vesemir tentatively offers the tower room for Yennefer – it being recently vacated by Triss – but the way Yennefer’s lip curls put that out of the window.

“Is it hopeless?” Jaskier asks, as they lay there that night looking at the ceiling.

Yennefer stays silent a while. There would be a moment where it all broke out, like a dam bursting it’s bank, but currently she was annoyed with herself. It wasn’t a case of ‘hope’, she felt like she had failed.

She let Jaskier massage her shoulders, though she wasn’t relaxing under his ministrations. They were both too tense. A powerful empire like Nilfgaard chasing after the man they both loved terrifies them.

“It’ll be alright,” she said eventually, flatly, “I won’t let it be anything else.”

He kisses her shoulder. She turns into his hold to press a comforting kiss to his chin.

“Yeah,” he tried not to let his voice wobble, “Geralt’s got out of worse. The spell will be finished by tomorrow?”

“Yes. By noon.”

For the past day she’s been using an old shirt of Geralt’s to trace his journey. They’d lost him in the middle of nowhere – pulled into a portal, no doubt. Yennefer was tracking the unknown magic.

“Tomorrow, we’ll set off.”

“My heart can’t take it anymore. There’s a flickering flame in my chest, threatening to go out. Any more hope might kill me. Every day I walk around in a haze. Smoke chokes my lungs and gets in my eyes.”

She doesn’t answer verbally but she wipes away the tears gathered on his lower eyelids. They lie there for a moment, leaching warmth from each other. The cold room around them dark and uninviting. Geralt is all around them, but not here with them. It’s not right.

“Yenna, why were you not wearing the lilac and gooseberry glamour, when you met me in Oxenfurt?” he asks suddenly.

She starts back, he hadn’t known what he was going to say until he had said it so no wonder she’s surprised.

“I hadn’t had a chance to make much more. What with Sodden, then recovering. I was rationing it. Then I found Geralt never made it to Nenneke’s. It’s also incredibly noticeable, I wasn’t sure if this mage was having you watched.”

Jaskier ‘hms’, “Made recognising you bloody difficult,” he muses, “Thankfully you’ve got a dependably good dress sense.”

She fixes him with a frown. Is she angry with him? It’s damned difficult to read an expression when the person he’s with is new to him, every single time.

“What?”

“Jaskier. Do you have prosopagnosia?”

“Well, the healer in Lettenhove called it Face-blindness. Why?”

“I was about to say you don’t seem self-conscious about it, but you’ve never been self-conscious about anything.”

“Being on the road helps. You never run into the same people twice. And you meet very distinctive people, the Countess de Stael, for example, has her ears pierced in 6 different places. You have your scent and your you-ness. And Geralt of course. People do get offended when I tell them I’m bad with faces but-” he shrugs, sighing. School had been different, of course. But he does love company, he just gained a reputation of being very self-centred. Which, he guessed, was true, despite everything.

“No wonder people think you’re a cad.”

“No, I am,” he assures her, then wiggles his eyebrows, “Just perhaps not as bad a one as I intend to be.”

She elbows him and he winced theatrically.

“I’m guessing, then, you don’t want me to sing you the new lullaby I’ve been working on? Guaranteed to send anyone, even powerful mages, to sleep in less than 3 minutes!”

“Just go to sleep, Jaskier.”

*

The next day they portal into ruined Cintra, where Yennefer’s spell determines Geralt to be. It’s raining, because Jaskier’s life has a sense for pathetic fallacy.

The sensible thing would have been to wait until nightfall and unlock Geralt’s cage under the quiet starlight. That doesn’t happen, of course. Jaskier doesn’t have a plan, and neither does Yennefer. If it were up to him they’d charge in there, rescue Geralt and they’d all ride away on Roach into the sunset. (The practicalities of the 5 of them fitting on Roach aside, of course. He’s a dreamer).

But they don’t know where Cirilla is, nor Triss. There is, however, a whisper of _something_ happening in the next few days which, because Jaskier is familiar with narrative storytelling, means a prisoner transfer. This means that this is their Last Stand.

So, they have to decide whether or not to break into an incredibly secure camp or interrupt a guarded convoy, well Yennefer has to decide. This is more her expertise, after all. Lambert is fairly close, but he won’t make it in time for a break in, and he wouldn’t be able to catch up to the convoy.

The worry of the Nilfgaardian’s portalling Geralt away, rather than using the armoured carts to transport him, eventually outweighs the impracticalities of rather-a-lot-of-soldiers vs the 2 of them. So, they decide to attack at dawn, which is still heroic, isn’t it? Does he care?

Yennefer looks as cool and collected as she usually looks, but annoyed. Jaskier is still feeling ill from the portal, or perhaps it’s nerves. He is infused with an anxious adrenaline he can’t push down, it’s bubbling in his stomach. His heart is red hot with hope.

The camp is oh-so-quiet, for about 5 minutes. The first few guards are brought to their knees after Yennefer hits them with a cleverly cast somne but when their bodies hit the floor their comrades awake with angry shouts. Jaskier throws a bomb in their direction and a foul gas poisons the campsite. Jaskier pulls the hastily prepared mask across his lower face and dives for the fallen soldiers.

With Yennefer on security and destroy detail, Jaskier’s task is to find the keys to the barred cages and release the prisoners. So, with Yennefer choking out anyone who gets within a sword’s length of Jaskier, Jaskier collects all the keys he can find. Slipping and sliding in the mud, he runs towards the end tent where the cages are hidden from view. Bursting through the curtained entrance he almost falls over.

The guards fall to the floor under Yennefer’s (cold gaze) magical machinations. A heat from a blast outside washes over him.

There are 4 cages within.

In one lies a woman Jaskier doesn’t recognise, asleep. In another a small figure is shaking at the bars of the cage with vehemence. In the other cage a tall white-haired figure lies slumped along the cage bars. The white hair looks familiar. The figure has no swords, but Jaskier has ran his hands through that hair enough to recognise it.

His heart leaps.

His traitorous eyes flicker to the fourth cage…

Oh gods no. He stares from one cage to the next. Two identical figures. At least he _thinks_ they’re identical: they’re dressed the same, they have the same hair, the same build. That’s definitely Geralt’s hair.

“Oh shit,” Yennefer says from behind him, sounding breathless after her fight. Thank fuck for Yennefer; they must have the same faces too.

“Okay, so do your little magic thing? Which one is the real one? Do you know?” He directs this last question to the child in the second cage.

They shrug.

A bang resounds outside.

“I suggest we let them both out and deal with consequences later?” He says, his voice breaking in panic.

Another bang sends a guard though the tent opening and into the supporting column where he slid down, dazed slightly. One of Yennefer’s traps has evidently just sprung, or else the Mage has arrived and is angry.

“Fine,” Yennefer bit out, hitting the guard with a spell that puts him down permanently.

“Are you Yennefer?” The child, Cirilla - of course it was, who else would it be? – asks curiously.

“Yes. I’ll get Triss. Jaskier you get that Geralt, I’ll get this one.”

“Right, uh, Princess Cirilla? If you could find Roach, that would be lovely.”

She leaves, picking up one of Geralt’s swords as she leaves. Jaskier hope she knows what she’s doing.

Jaskier gets his shoulder under this-Geralt and hefts him to his feet. Across the tent he can see Yennefer has done the same for that-Geralt - either Yennefer was far stronger than she looked, had bewitched Geralt to be lighter, or Geralt needed to put some weight on. She sets him down against the middle column.

“Portal, Yenna?” He said, panting a bit. Dear gods he needed to lift more.

“One minute bard,” she was drawing the requisite symbol in mid-air, “Where’s Cirilla?”

Jaskier belatedly realises it wasn’t perhaps the best idea to send the most wanted girl in all of Cintra outside into a camp full of enemy soldiers. Luckily, she returns with a grumpy Roach, who hrumphs at the sight of Jaskier and Yennefer.

“We need to go. Now!” Cirilla exclaims urgently.

The portal springs up. Yennefer goes through first with Triss, then returns for other-Geralt. Cirilla tries to get Roach through to no avail, so Jaskier goes next, hoping that the sight of a-Geralt going through might entice the curmudgeonly horse. Sure, enough Cirilla and Roach come through next, Yennefer and other-Geralt bringing up the rear. The portal closes with a pop behind them.

Yennefer practically drops her Geralt as she sets up protective sigils, preventing anyone from following their portal.

Jaskier lowers his-Geralt to the ground and throws up a whole lot of nothing on to the grassy slopes of the valley they’ve landed in. Oh gods this is awful.

Triss is laid down out on a handy bed of moss, stirring only minutely.

“What happened?” Yennefer demands of Ciri, who answers mulishly:

“We were travelling to the temple school. We were set upon by soldiers, bandits, and had to change the route. It was taking far too long to get there, Geralt was worried. Then we were set upon by bandits again. They had a sorcerer, Rience or something.” She shrugged.

“It _was_ that bastard!” Yennefer exclaims, looking very much like she wants to go back to that Nilfgaardian camp and raise it to the ground as she had Sodden Hill.

“Uh,” right, “What do we do now?” Jaskier asks. He brushes down his trousers, they’ve accrued dust, “Anyone got any Silver on them, perhaps?”

Yennefer shakes her head, “It can be traced.”

“What about Geralt’s sword?” He looks around their little clearing.

“Shit!”

The profanity, from someone so young, surprises them. They stare at Cirilla, who looks at her feet. Her shoulders set.

“I left it in the camp,” she admits, holding onto Geralt’s steel sword very protectively.

Yennefer swears under her breath, then, “What about that fancy dagger Geralt gave you, Jaskier?”

“Uh, I left it at Kaer Morhen,” he admits ashamedly, “I know I should have brought it to a fight but honestly, I didn’t want to see it damaged Yenna, it’s far too beautiful for that! And honestly, with Geralt and you around, I don’t _actually_ get around to much fighting, do I? You two keep me far too safe for that!”

“You’re a moron, you do know that right?” Her tone was fondly exasperated.

“What do you both see in me?” He asks, trying to levity. His heart skips sadly, sometimes he does wonder...

She sighs apologetically.

“That bond you have with Geralt, any use?”

Yennefer ‘hms’ in dissatisfaction, shaking her head, but instead turns to the wayward princess, “Cirilla, any silver?”

“Ciri. And no.”

“Right. So, are we fucked or what? I suppose we could head to Novigrad, find Dudu – a doppler friend of mine – Dudu might be able to help.” Jaskier stands with his hands on his hips, looking at the two Geralts.

“I met a doppler. After leaving Cintra. He tried to take me and my friend Dara to the Nilfgaardians.”

“Is this the same doppler, do you think?” Jaskier looks at the two Geralt’s.

“We won’t know until they wake up. Jaskier fetch a bucket of water.”

“What-? Oh, no! Can’t you magic-? Alright, fine! With what bucket!” She passes him a small bucket she’s materialised out of nowhere.

“And you can’t do that to create a sword, or a bracelet or something?”

“It wouldn’t be real silver,” she shrugs apologetically, “Ciri, hide the sword. We don’t want the doppler grabbing it. Then go sit with Triss.”

Jaskier goes down to the river and fills up the bucket.

“Now?” He asks when he returns.

“Might as well.” She shrugs, stretching her shoulder muscles in preparation for a fight. So Jaskier throws the bucket of water over the two Geralt’s.

They start awake at the same time, both of them immediately going for swords that aren’t there.

“Woah, big guy – guys! Uh settle down!” Jaskier says, arms wide placatingly. They’ve both jumped to their feet, hands raised to punch something.

“Which one of you is the real one, then?” Yennefer asks, circling them both. She has a ball of blue flame cradled in the palm of her hand, flickering gently. Comfortingly.

Over 6 feet tall, white hair, scars, the blank face – though that could just be Jaskier’s terrible face reading. Definitely Geralt. Both witchers immediately look to Cirilla, which is insulting but understandable under the circumstances.

“You okay?” One asks.

She glares at him.

“Jaskier, Yennefer,” the other says, sounding relieved. But are they just good at acting? He reaches out but Jaskier, who desperately wants to be gathered up in those warm, strong, arms, dances out of the way.

“Nope, not yet, my dear. Yennefer and I have travelled far too far to take home the wrong Geralt!”

Jaskier thinks about what he learned about dopplers from Dudu. They can mimic every physical characteristic of their chosen subject, clothes, and magical abilities and all. They have the memories of the subject but not the emotions or the will.

Jaskier joins Yennefer in circling the duo.

“Dopplers aren’t aggressive people? We could ask them both to attack someone?”

“Geralt wouldn’t do that either.”

Jaskier shrugged, ‘true’.

Jaskier stares at the two of them. One of them is standing tall, looking at Yennefer and Jaskier in the eye as they pass. The other is staring at the ground a little. Jaskier looks at the set of the shoulders.

“That one. He’s the real one. That’s how Geralt stands.” Like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. The doppler hasn’t lived through the last century-ish of Geralt’s life, he hasn’t felt the same loss. He may remember what Geralt does, but not the meaning of it.

For Jaskier, looking at them without the identical faces to distract him, it’s like looking at two different people. Because they are two different people.

“Are you sure?” Yennefer asks.

“Eh,” he waves his hands to say ‘either-or’, “About 90%.”

“We need better than that,” She says.

“There’s one thing I could do to see… I was thinking like, uh, Lilacs and Gooseberries?” He’s terrible at talking in code. Already walking through life is a nightmare, he doesn’t need more confusion!

He meets Yennefer’s eye. She nods comprehendingly.

“Do it.”

So Jaskier does what he’s wanted to do since he walked down that mountain with the melted pieces of his breaking heart under his feet. He tackles Geralt in a bear hug. And it _is_ Geralt; he smells wonderfully of Roach. Something so ingrained in Geralt it can’t be confused with anyone else. The way he reaches up, still so tentative after all these years, to pat Jaskier on the small of the back, confirms it.

As he crushes Geralt to his chest he looks over his shoulder to where Yennefer is sniffing the doppler, “And?”

“Sort of wood-y,” she verifies.

“Oh, thank fuck!” And he pulls Geralt into a long-awaited kiss, “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay”.

Thus, ensues a scuffle in which the doppler makes a bid for escape. (Though Jaskier is more concerned with Geralt’s wellbeing, checking him all over). Yennefer restrains the doppler with a well-timed spell to the creature’s legs. Ciri grabs the sword and holds it threateningly towards the doppler.

As the doppler falls it transforms. A snazzy blue doublet and a trouser suite replaces Geralt’s loose shirt and leather trousers. A brown mop of hair blooms from thick white tresses.

“Well, who the fuck is that?”

They end up letting the doppler go. This is a different doppler from the one that tried to lure Ciri to Nilfgaard, Geralt vouches that this one was there under duress, as much a prisoner as they were. Nilfgaard had the plan to transport the doppler-as-Geralt via armoured convoy southwards so that Geralt could be portalled quietly. They’ll let him go back to his family in Novigrad, dressed as Jaskier. Sadly, he declines Jaskier’s offer of taking over his classes in Oxenfurt. (Jaskier’s going to be in so much trouble when he gets back, he’s just abandoned his students in the middle of a term).

Ciri still needs to get to Nenneke’s and Triss isn’t well. Geralt and Yennefer want to find out who Rience is working for. For a second-rate mage like him, he must be being trained by someone.

Jaskier is going to help them, of course he is. They’re both so unused to warmth they need someone like him to liven things up a bit.

They decide to camp for the night, Yennefer is far to tired to portal them from wherever-the-fuck-they-are, and they only have Roach for the 6 of them. They build a fire from the remains of Yennefer’s conjured bucket and a hastily dispatched shrub with just a splash of igni.

There’s a sorry lack of food, but Jaskier and Yennfer hadn’t really planned for an overnight stay.

“There’s a bardic festival in Temeria we could stop off at on our way to Vizima, I’m sure Nenneke won’t mind if we’re a little bit late. You can even get ahead of your teaching along the way!” Jaskier suggests linking arms with Yennefer and Geralt as they sit side by side in front of the fire. They both shiver at the affection before leaning in. Like formerly feral cats, he thinks fondly.

“We need to get Triss somewhere first.”

“Well, we can drop her off at the capital, she’s court mage there, isn’t she? We can leave her in the very capable hands of their court physician. If we leave in the morning, we can get there before the opening ceremony!”

He misses the fondly bemused look Yennefer and Geralt exchange over his head.

Ciri’s snoozing next to Triss on the mossy bank, under Yennefer’s cloak. The doppler snores loudly a few feet away. (Jaskier _refuses_ to believe he snores like that, he’s an _angel_ in bed).

Despite not having eaten all day, Jaskier’s stomach feels very warm. Affection bursting forth from his very being.

His heart is on fire, beating strongly for the ones he loves. Tears of joy spill onto his cheeks.

It’s just the smoke from the fire, he assures his anxious lovers questioning. He’s totally happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Please Comment and Kudos!


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